Superfluous
by Marauding
Summary: "The first time Severus Snape killed a man it rained. It rained for days and days and Severus had felt filthy, the grit of dark magic warping his teeth and coating his skin. He had cried along with the rain, wondering how the entire world had not yet drowned." / Severus Snape: a series of vignettes exploring regrettable words and bitter situations. T for language.


_The Harry Potter universe belongs to J. K. Rowling._

* * *

_- _**Superfluous -**

_one_

It felt as if the world had been left in the sun for too long, all bleached and tired, air thick and lungs dry. His lips trembled from both the want to cry and the need to vomit – Severus Snape missed his mother in that sort of distant way of his. He had taken to sitting in dark cafes, drinking foreign wine and etching obscene words into lacquered table tops. He sought no enjoyment from the activity, merely doing it as a _fuck you _to his loyalist youth.

Severus fancied himself as a poet – the tortured soul, one who'd lead an avant-garde movement, burning bright and dying young. He would own a cat, perhaps, and smoke expensive cigars. He could move to France. He'd always been interested in the works of Sartre.

A stale breeze entered and Severus looked up, eyes meeting Dolohov. The Death Eater looked out of place amongst the coffee beans and Severus, without really knowing why, wanted to laugh.

"I'm ready. Take me to Him."

_two_

"Would you prefer infinite wealth or true love?"

"Infinite wealth! Infinite wealth, always."

(She had hated that answer, lips thinning and hands withdrawing and oh, how he had wanted to change it.)

_three_

Severus Snape was nineteen the first time he Cruciated a girl. She had screamed – _please, please, please, oh God, oh God oh god ohgodohgodpleaseplease – _and he had hated that, anger mixing with panic until _Crucio, Crucio, Crucio, beg, you little bitch! _and so she had begged, pretty little blue eyes meeting cold black ones until _please, please stop! _

Severus Snape vomited the first time he Cruciated a girl.

_four_

"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"

_five_

It took Snape five months to make a student cry.

The second year Hufflepuff had hunched herself over the cauldron, crushed fluxweed escaping sweaty fingers until her panic reached a crescendo, hand knocking potion, acid touching skin. She had begun to scream then, the noise sounding both too loud and too distant for Severus to deal with; it was as if somebody had stuck a fishbowl over his head. He wished they'd included the water. Drowning seemed like a romantic exit.

Her name was Sally. Severus Snape had been watching her; she had a maze of curly brown hair and nervous, darting eyes that reminded him of a rabbit. She had added far too many lacewings - the _useless, good-for-nothing brat – _and Severus was vaguely curious as to what was going to happen. There was probably something morally reprehensible in regards to testing theories on students, but Severus found that he was much too tired and much too sad to care.

"Idiot girl!"

He noted, with a hint of surprise, that her tears did not make him feel good.

_six_

The first time Severus Snape killed a man it rained. It rained for days and days and Severus had felt filthy, the grit of dark magic warping his teeth and coating his skin. He had cried along with the rain, wondering how the entire world had not yet drowned.

_seven_

Angry mouths and dirty words and little intentions and what was the point? Severus wanted to escape, but there was nowhere to go – he had graduated (and what a non-event that had been; a brief touching of wrists, a few curt nods and then out he had walked, sun weak and blood ill, without a backwards glance). Severus had become a man of questionable bars and shadows. He didn't know what he was looking for, only knowing that something was definitely and uncomfortably missing.

"What's the point?" he had asked the witch – blonde, tight thighs and a lamp-like smile, as if she were burning from the inside out; a tattoo the size of his hand. She had laughed and the lace had fallen, fingers silencing mouth. Severus had felt mildly embarrassed, feeling both too young and too old; his ankles stuck out of his pants and his elbows felt large, jarring, as if somebody had replaced them with wire.

"Is this all there is? Or are we God-damn stuck with eternal conscious thought?"

The witch did not have the answers.

_eight_

Severus was fourteen the first time he kissed a girl. She had crooked teeth and a permanent blush and she always wore gloves, leaving Severus with the impression that she had ugly hands. She was not Lily Evans.

The kiss itself was awkward, both too clumsy and too stiff. He had his eyes open the entire time.

_nine _

The second time Severus cast the Cruciatus Curse on a girl he laughed.

_ten _

Lily Evans became Lily Potter on the nineteenth of August, 1978. Severus didn't leave his bed for two days.

_eleven _

It was more out of obligation than any loyalty towards blood supremacy that Severus found himself tattooed. The Mark didn't evoke any sense of pride out of him – the first time Severus met Voldemort he had later vomited, acid and bile rising and choking until he lay exhausted, stomach muscles contracting, eyes blurred with tears. Afterwards he had dreamt of death. Severus wasn't like Dolohov or Malfoy, enticed by the idea of power, or the Black brother, enticed by the restoration of pureblood order; he wasn't like Lestrange, in it for the sadism. Severus Snape became a Death Eater because there was _nothing else to fucking do _and _nobody gave a shit anyway._

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ..."

"And this is The Prophecy you heard?"

"Yes, my Lord."

_twelve_

The third Cruciatus Curse Severus Snape used was on a child. He felt nothing.

* * *

_I love the idea of Snape digging existentialism. The title of the 'fic comes from a line within Sartre's 'Nausea': "I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out as least one of these superfluous lives."_


End file.
